Spreading Deserts

[Mel Landers]

Hi everyone,

 

I need to ask for someone to send me a copy of Stephen's letter. The mouse cord got caught as I was trying to hit respond and hit the delete button.

 

I want to thank him and Mike both for their input today and invite them to participate with the group that will correspond on the discussion list. I believe it was a report from Dr. Lehmann that first informed me about the existance of the dark earth soils and that informed me about the large quantity of humus in the soils. I immediately began picking the brain of my friend Dr. Raul Verguirero of Sao Paulo, concerning his knowlege of humus. I think Jacky will remember Raul.

 

To close out this seminar I am pasting in an article that appeared from REUTERS NEWS Today concerning desertification and the dwindling food supply. The video from the Australian Permaculture Association proves that mulched raised beds can revolutionisze desert crop production. We need to find a way to build dark earth under those soils or hundrds of millions of people will starve over the next decade or two.

 

For a little over a decade, climatologists have been warning about the drastic changes that would take place in the distant future, always basing their predictions on the current rates of increase, despite the rapid escalation in those rates of increase. I understand their perdicament. They are doing scientific investigations and must report only what they see, in order not to lose their scientific credibility.

 

Anyone who is intersted can read my comments about this from a number of years ago in the New Agricultualist online. at http://www.new-ag.info/00-3/perspect.html

 

Here is the article. Thank you all for your participation and you Jacky for all your hard work.

 

mel

 

Spreading deserts threaten world food supply

By Robert Evans Fri Aug 31, 2007   REUTERS

GENEVA (Reuters) - Spreading deserts and degradation of farm land due to climate change will pose a serious threat to food supplies for the world's surging population in coming years, a senior United Nations scientist warned on Friday.

M.V.K. Sivakumar of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the crunch could come in just over a decade as all continents see more weather-related disasters like heat waves, floods, landslides and wildfires.

"Should we worry about land being degraded? Yes," Sivakumar, who leads the WMO's agricultural meteorology division, told a news conference in Geneva.

"Today we feed the present world population of 6.3 billion from the 11 per cent of the land surface that can be used for serious food production. The question is: Will we be able to feed the 8.2 billion that we expect to populate the globe in 2020 if even less land is available for farming?," he said.

Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia -- where the climate is already more extreme and arid regions are common -- will be most affected as rainfall declines and its timing becomes less predictable, making water more scarce, he said.

But Europe, particularly around the Mediterranean, would also suffer from heat waves like those that this summer have led to devastating fires in Greece.

Declining rainfall and evaporation of water supplies could also mean less was available for irrigation and for generating electricity for farm machinery, causing lower crop productivity.

Sivakumar said that in some regions the spread of deserts and the salination of once arable land was already well under way. In the future it would be most widespread in drier areas of Latin America, including in farming giant Brazil.

In Africa, increasing climate variability would create major problems for farmers, who are likely to see their growing seasons getting shorter and crop yields cut, especially in areas near already arid and semi-arid regions.

Sivakumar, speaking on the eve of a U.N. conference on desertification in Madrid from September 3-14, said it was vital for the international community to help put innovative and adaptive land-management practices into action.

These should be targeted at preserving land and water resources. But a return to mixing crops, rather than focusing on single-crop production based on intensive use of fertilizers, could also help face the challenge, he said.

 

 

---

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[arclein]

The one open question that I want to see answered is the success or
failure of a terra preta soil in overcoming various levels of
salination. My instincts tell me that there is every likelihood that
the terra preta will at least progressively separate the saline soil
from sweet soil. A wonderful result, but it will take a lot of field
work to sort this all out. Artificially raising beds is a method of
getting the same result but obviously only good for truck farming.

arclein

On Aug 31, 6:32 pm, Mel Landers <agri...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I need to ask for someone to send me a copy of Stephen's letter. The mouse cord got caught as I was trying to hit respond and hit the delete button.
>
> I want to thank him and Mike both for their input today and invite them to participate with the group that will correspond on the discussion list. I believe it was a report from Dr. Lehmann that first informed me about the existance of the dark earth soils and that informed me about the large quantity of humus in the soils. I immediately began picking the brain of my friend Dr. Raul Verguirero of Sao Paulo, concerning his knowlege of humus. I think Jacky will remember Raul.
>
> To close out this seminar I am pasting in an article that appeared from REUTERS NEWS Today concerning desertification and the dwindling food supply. The video from the Australian Permaculture Association proves that mulched raised beds can revolutionisze desert crop production. We need to find a way to build dark earth under those soils or hundrds of millions of people will starve over the next decade or two.
>
> For a little over a decade, climatologists have been warning about the drastic changes that would take place in the distant future, always basing their predictions on the current rates of increase, despite the rapid escalation in those rates of increase. I understand their perdicament. They are doing scientific investigations and must report only what they see, in order not to lose their scientific credibility.
>

> Anyone who is intersted can read my comments about this from a number of years ago in the New Agricultualist online. athttp://www.new-ag.info/00-3/perspect.html

>
> Here is the article. Thank you all for your participation and you Jacky for all your hard work.
>
> mel
>
> Spreading deserts threaten world food supply
> By Robert Evans Fri Aug 31, 2007 REUTERS
> GENEVA (Reuters) - Spreading deserts and degradation of farm land due to climate change will pose a serious threat to food supplies for the world's surging population in coming years, a senior United Nations scientist warned on Friday.
> M.V.K. Sivakumar of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the crunch could come in just over a decade as all continents see more weather-related disasters like heat waves, floods, landslides and wildfires.
> "Should we worry about land being degraded? Yes," Sivakumar, who leads the WMO's agricultural meteorology division, told a news conference in Geneva.
> "Today we feed the present world population of 6.3 billion from the 11 per cent of the land surface that can be used for serious food production. The question is: Will we be able to feed the 8.2 billion that we expect to populate the globe in 2020 if even less land is available for farming?," he said.
> Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia -- where the climate is already more extreme and arid regions are common -- will be most affected as rainfall declines and its timing becomes less predictable, making water more scarce, he said.
> But Europe, particularly around the Mediterranean, would also suffer from heat waves like those that this summer have led to devastating fires in Greece.
> Declining rainfall and evaporation of water supplies could also mean less was available for irrigation and for generating electricity for farm machinery, causing lower crop productivity.
> Sivakumar said that in some regions the spread of deserts and the salination of once arable land was already well under way. In the future it would be most widespread in drier areas of Latin America, including in farming giant Brazil.
> In Africa, increasing climate variability would create major problems for farmers, who are likely to see their growing seasons getting shorter and crop yields cut, especially in areas near already arid and semi-arid regions.
> Sivakumar, speaking on the eve of a U.N. conference on desertification in Madrid from September 3-14, said it was vital for the international community to help put innovative and adaptive land-management practices into action.
> These should be targeted at preserving land and water resources. But a return to mixing crops, rather than focusing on single-crop production based on intensive use of fertilizers, could also help face the challenge, he said.
>

> ---------------------------------